It's not the end of the world, says O'Neill

Aberdeen 1Celtic 1

The champions wearily crawled into the winter break with a 1-1 draw at Aberdeen this afternoon as Rangers extended their lead with a win over Dundee at Ibrox.

However, the Irishman was far from downhearted as he looked to a refreshing break and he claimed the destination of the championship was still in Celtic's hands.

"It's not the end of the world far from it," said O'Neill. "We have still taken a point and it's still in our own hands.

"We still have to play Rangers twice and after the Kilmarnock game I feel we have gained a point and it's still within our own grasp.

"We know that matches are always going to be difficult against them. But we are definitely looking forward to the break now.

"The players have played a lot of games and they showed today how tired they were and how much they are looking forward to the break and we'll see if we can refresh ourselves."

However, another concern for O'Neill was the sight of Henrik Larsson forced to leave the field with a head injury after scoring his 30th goal of the season.

He was at his opportunistic best to get ahead of Philip McGuire before he was hurt in the resulting collision, but his boss still singled him out for special praise.

"Obviously he is a bit dazed," added O'Neill. "But hopefully he will recovery from that quickly. The goal he took I thought was magnificent. He has got in and saw one thing and it was a world-class goal from a world-class player. It was as brave as you could imagine.

"He was feeling pretty dazed and felt a bit of a tingling sensation up and down his arm so we thought we should get him off as quickly as we could.

"As you will know he doesn't like to come off in any sort of circumstances, but it was a head blow and we were a bit concerned and he is feeling pretty groggy.

"I'm not sure what it is and obviously a bit of a lump has come up, but he is sure to get it checked out tonight."

Aberdeen manager Steve Patterson today confirmed he was in the chase to sign midfielder Dennis Wyness from his former club, Inverness.

He celebrated his first point against the Old Firm since taking over at Pittodrie courtesy of Russell Anderson's equaliser and then spoke of his plans during the winter break.

Patterson said: "We will certainly be speaking to Inverness Caley about that and we feel that over the past three seasons he has proved to be an SPL player.

"He is a very intelligent player, but there are two or three other SPL clubs after Dennis, but I would like to think he would like to link up with me again."

ABERDEEN: Preece, Anderson, McGuire, McAllister (Payne 82), McNaughton, Deloumeaux, Rutkiewicz, Derek Young, Clark, Mackie, D'Jaffo (Michie 82).

CELTIC: Hedman, Valgaeren, Balde, Mjallby, McNamara, Lambert, Petrov (Smith 77), Sutton, Thompson, Larsson (Fernandez 34), Hartson, Fernandez (Maloney 88).